Earth Summit delegates hope to solve environmental issues

Published: Sunday, August 25, 2002

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa  Ten years ago, Earth Summit delegates celebrated in the streets of Rio de Janiero. But as leaders of more than 100 nations prepare to gather again  more somberly this time, in Johannesburg  delegates admit that little, if any, headway has been made to prevent global warming, species extinctions and other environmental problems.

For nearly two weeks, starting Monday, 65,000 delegates will convene in venues throughout sprawling Johannesburg. It's like the Olympics of world politics.

The mission of the World Summit for Sustainable Development has been stated many ways but those involved say it boils down to this: To save the planet from ecological devastation and rescue billions of people from wretched poverty.

The meeting, organized by the United Nations, is nicknamed "Rio+10" because it marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark Earth Summit in the pulsing South American metropolis, which put environmental issues on the global political agenda for the first time.

Today, few of the Rio goals have been met. By many measures, Earth's condition has deteriorated. Global temperatures and sea levels creep upward as heat-trapping pollution accumulates in the atmosphere. Deforestation and species losses mount. And as the world's population gallops past six billion, problems of clean water, infectious disease, hunger and our appetite for limited natural resources worsen.

In Johannesburg, summit leaders have made the diplomats' job even harder by expanding the agenda to include issues of enormous human suffering. Add to it the growing resentment that the benefits of globalization continue to be concentrated in the hands of Western corporations and elude the outstretched grasp of the developing world.

'If we do nothing tochange ... we will compromise the long-term security of Earthand its people.'

Nitin Desai

SUBHEAD:Earth Summit secretary-general

On Saturday, international negotiators discussed how to overcome their differences on issues before the summit's official opening.

Authorities also fired stun grenades at about 300 demonstrators who tried to break through a police cordon at a nearby university. One person was arrested and there were no immediate reports of injuries in the protest against globalization.

Greenpeace activists also scaled the wall of a building at a nuclear power plant to protest the use of nuclear energy in Africa.

What started in Rio as an exuberant political sprint into a greener, post-Cold War future has turned into a grueling marathon with an uncertain finish line.

"If we do nothing to change our current indiscriminate patterns of development, we will compromise the long-term security of the Earth and its people," says Nitin Desai, the summit's secretary-general.